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A PHOTOGRAPHER who sets out to portray other artists as such -- in their studios, with their work, perhaps even at work -- takes on the role of a critic. The task is somehow to register both how the artists understand their relation to an idea of art and how the photographer understands that relation to it. Since those two understandings may not naturally coincide, the project may tend to become fraught with competitiveness, if not outright conflict -- just as in relations between artists and critics.

But Ricardo Barros of Princeton turns out to be a discreet and rather tolerant critic of the 31 artists he has portrayed in ''Sculptors: A Portfolio of Photographs,'' at Grounds for Sculpture here. Mr. Barros is not the kind of photographer who imposes a highly marked style on any subject he takes on. Each of these portraits has clearly been thought through differently -- composed differently, lighted differently -- reflecting the collaborative nature of his work with the sculptors Mr. Barros has chosen to portray.

He may put his pictures together in a self-effacing way, but that is not to say he simply echoes his subjects' self-images. He seems to know that a certain degree of critical tension will give liveliness and complexity to his images, but he lets the tension remain a nuance. At times his matter-of-factness seems a wry counterpoint to the grandiosity of some of the sculptors, who are drawn to theatrical, even imperious gestures.

Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas pulls back a plastic sheet from around a large, abstracted head with theatrical sweep. Barry Snyder turns away from the camera to show off the rip in the back of his T-shirt, yet he can't help turning his head back, as if to check, out of the corner of his eye, whether the viewer is fittingly impressed with his sartorial casualness. Elsewhere, it is less a gesture than an extravagant pose, like the pensive, far-off gaze of the black-hatted Francois (Crow) Guillemin.

More surprising, though, are the images in which a gesture that should have been corny turns out to be unexpectedly touching -- for example, the one of Marilyn Simon looking as if she is just about to lay a kiss on the portrait head in her hands. Is it the sculpture itself, or its subject, of which she is so enamored? The smile lines around her eye suggest that she has a more playful attitude than one might have guessed.

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Other lovely moments: the way Yonjin Han studies the stone he is about to work on like a scholar preparing to annotate a canonical text; Michele Oka Doner leaning far back toward the edge of the frame so as to make as much room in the image as she can for the sculptures spread across the wooden floor; Vladimir Kanevsky cradling his starkly totemic sculpture as he strides away from the camera across a snowy field toward the distant prospect of lower Manhattan, as if making his way toward a showdown between those two seemingly incompatible realities.

The sculptors in most of these pictures are not household names. Several among them are quite famous -- Magdalena Abakanowicz, Marisol, George Segal, to name a few -- but Mr. Barros seems to have had more success in drawing out nuances from lesser-known figures who are perhaps less entrenched in their own self-representation. Like a good critic who draws you deeper into the art -- who, by making you feel the limits of mere criticism, renews your appetite for art itself -- Mr. Barros succeeds in raising curiosity about these sculptors and their work. If only Grounds for Sculpture had concurrently mounted an exhibition of the work of his subjects.

INSTEAD, unfortunately, Mr. Barros's photographs are being shown at the same time as an exhibition of work by five artists who use glass as their primary medium, often in combination with other materials. There is an alternative artistic universe of work identified by its grounding in craft-oriented materials, like ceramic or textiles as well as glass, and this exhibition of glass sculpture is good mainly for showing why the mainstream art world tends to view its craft-based twin as a quagmire of kitsch, whimsy and slick virtuosity. That bias is certainly mistaken in the sense that the craft world harbors artists who are remarkable by any standard, among them Toshiko Takaezu, a Quakertown ceramist who is among those portrayed in Mr. Barros's portfolio. But neither can it be entirely false when critical standards in the field allow a respectable institution to make the kind of choices found here.

A more fitting companion to Mr. Barros's work is ''Sigh (The Morning You Left),'' a 1993 sculpture by Jesse Moore in the permanent collection of Grounds for Sculpture, which has been placed (unfortunately, without a label) on the mezzanine where the photographs are hung. With its intertwining of two trumpetlike structures, it is a vivid and striking form, and it looks just as good as it did outdoors here two years ago.

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A version of this review appears in print on January 3, 1999, on Page NJ14 of the National edition with the headline: ART REVIEW; Turning the Lens on Visionaries From Another Medium. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe